Just Desserts

Yesterday we played some pathfinder. I got to play the sorcerer since his player was out and my character was turned to stone... not that it mattered much since I didn't want to also get the sorcerer turned to stone and his fort save was pathetic. Fortunately, I wasn't out for the whole session.

After Kaito was turned to stone, some of the other people fighting the apparent medusa discovered that she only got one chance to turn people to stone -- if you saved against her 'gaze' the first time, you were safe. So, after finishing off the remaining doppleganger, Val and Altei ran in to help fight her.

June did not feel safe looking at her even once, so he tried to stick to area-effect spells. Unfortunately, fireball would be a terrible idea in such close quarters, and even Burning Hands (which he did use once) was a really bad idea when so many friends were gathered around and you didn't want to actually look to see what you were doing. So after one sort-of-successful attempt, he switched to uselessly tossing Acid Splash spells to try to take down her images -- which all missed, partly because he still wasn't looking at her.

Besides, it seemed like she resisted fire, judging by her completely ignoring Ash's flaming sphere.

Altei had a lot better luck... as did Elsie, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere (well, out of etherealness) and was able to fight just fine with her eyes closed. The enemy tried to convince Elsie to go jump off the tower, but she shook it off and kept punching.

Seeing that Elsie was really badly hurt, Phoof gave her a special berry from her branches -- a cherry! It gave her a huge burst, increasing her speed and damage and giving her a ton of temporary hit points. Between that, Ash finally landing a Shocking Grasp (which the enemy was vulnerable to), and Altei's death from above, the medusa went down.

Elsie was not satisfied. "Come on! There's a scary thing at the bottom and we have to go kill it now now now!" No one could understand her, but Kaito -- who'd just turned back from stone, because the 'medusa' was really just wearing a medusa mask, and the item's effect was not permanent -- followed to try to see what she was talking about... so Elsie grabbed him and dragged him rapidly down the winding staircase, jumping over the gaps until she finally missed one ten feet above the floor, dumping them both onto the lower level that the party had earlier bypassed.

Kaito held up his sunrod and cautiously made his way into the center of the room, when POW! A stitched-together golem of some sort appeared out of nowhere and punched him, slamming him into the back wall! "You're not supposed to be here!"

He flew into a rage, and he and Elsie tried to fight the thing...

It wasn't that they were ineffective. Kaito's admantium rapier pierced its rocklike skin easily, and Elsie just did enough damage that it didn't matter. But it kept hitting Kaito, over and over, and the wounds they made in it seemed to be healing almost as fast as they could damage it. Eventually, Kaito decided that there was no point dying just to take down a golem that they *didn't even need to fight*, and told Elsie to run away as he zoomed back up the stairs.

Elsie didn't follow, and despite her usually being a lot easier to hit, the creature didn't manage to land a solid blow before she pummeled it into the ground. Unfortunately, it kept regenerating, so she had to keep pummeling it to keep it down.

Upstairs, the rest of the party looted the medusa and went to work on the chests. One had magic items, one had gems and jewelry, and the rest had hundreds of little pouches with 100 coins in each, of various sorts -- copper, silver, gold, or platinum. They were still sorting through them when Kaito limped in through the door and begged for healing. Oh, and also told them that Elsie was downstairs fighting a golem and was probably dead by now.

So they went downstairs (flying, like the way they'd come up, instead of braving the rickety and collapsing staircase) and found Elsie and the golem.

Kaito: "If it won't stay down, we'll need to throw it in a pit or something. Maybe toss it off the docks?"Someone else: "Won't that attract a lot of attention? Everyone will see us dragging this golem through the streets..."Kaito: "Sounds good to me."

As it turned out, it was good. In fact, the people of the underbridge district basically gave them a murder parade -- they recognized the golem as the fearsome Scarecrow that had been terrorizing the city, appearing out of nowhere to murder people or make them vanish! They led the party to a mysterious pipe from ancient times that dropped hundreds of feet, and helped them push the scarecrow up and into it, where it hopefully wouldn't be able to get out.

Then they all headed back to the inn. It was getting early.

After a night-and-or-morning's sleep, they split up the treasure and identified the magic items, keeping most of them, and went over the note they'd found crumpled up and torn in half in opposite sides of the tower room. Apparently, the medusa's sister had written her a passive-aggressive letter about how she hoped she was doing well murdering random people to collect greedy souls, and how if she ever got tired of wasting her time she could come to the greed-farming operation at Fort Rannick, near Turtleback Ferry.

Searching for info in the city revealed the location of Turtleback Ferry -- a town, not a ferry per se -- but didn't find anything about Fort Rannick. Still, it was obviously the next lead to follow up on...

Kaito went to report to his parole officer, handing over the encrypted journal and the crumpled note. Seeing the note, the guards were shocked, and ran off immediately before he could ask about the fort or try to get an audience with the mayor (who'd been identified in the note as a likely target).

It didn't really matter, though, since the guards came back and invited him 'and his friends' to meet with the mayor. After navigating some security measures -- mostly scanning for 'evil artifacts' -- the party was led to a grand feast, where the mayor congratulated and thanked them for their help with the murders, and gave them 6000 gold each as a reward! And another 700 for travel expenses, to follow up what the note said about Fort Rannick. Apparently it was a Magnimar outpost that had gone dark a few weeks ago. Dun dun DUN!

He also offered to buy any 'evil artifacts' off the party, which included the evil masks and the Amulets of Sihedron. Kaito had already turned in his evil mask earlier, and Ash had hers hidden back at the inn, but Ash sold an amulet. Kaito decided to keep his, even if it was evil, since it had just saved his life in the fight against the golem.

So (after more shopping) the party rented some horses -- and a carriage for Altei, who hated riding -- and set off for Turtleback Ferry, where they'd be able to find directions to Fort Rannick and maybe more information.

They were joined by an elven ranger named Shalalu, who told them she was searching for her deadbeat ex-stepfather to ask him why he'd abandoned her. The last known location was Fort Rannick. She seemed trustworthy, so they let her come with them.

A few days later, as they were riding through a dense forest, they saw an obvious ambush point -- three logs blocking the road. Various party members spread out into the forest to try to find the ambushers before they coul spring the ambush, while a few people hung back with the wagon and Shalalu and Altei (invisible) walked forwards to draw fire.

Shalalu shot first, taking down one of the bandits (according to the trees Phoof spoke to, one of fifteen bandits), and then...

...and then we ended the session a bit early since a couple people had to leave.